The continuing struggle of cotton growers in the poorest region of the world is highlighted today by a report which reveals the many billions of dollars paid to rival farmers in the biggest economies since international talks began to make trade more fair.

As the Doha trade talks enter their tenth year this week, the Fairtrade Foundation calculates that the US, the European Union, China and India have in that time paid their cotton farmers $47bn (£29bn) in subsidies in total - flooding the international market and pushing down the global price for competitors, especially in west Africa, says the charity.

As a result, farmers in the four biggest cotton producing countries of west Africa are losing out on vital income which would help people in rural areas and pay for roads, schools and other developments to reduce their dependence on aid, it claims.

Introducing the report, The Great Cotton Stitch-up, the business secretary, Vince Cable, quotes an estimate by the charity Oxfam that the subsidies are costing west African cotton farmers and their families millions of dollars a year in potential income. A report by Oxfam in 2002 estimated the lost income at $191m (£118m) each year.

"The current system of subsidies cannot be right and certainly is not fair," writes Cable. "The principles of Fairtrade need to be integrated and reflected in the global trading system. The UK government is committed to working towards this aim."

When challenged on the steps they were taking, Cable's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) said the government was "determined to push for the reduction of these subsidies in Europe and beyond", and was pushing for an end to the Doha talks to remove limit protectionism and remove trade barriers. The government also helped fund Fairtrade labelling, among other policies, said a spokesman.

The report focuses on the so-called Cotton 4 – Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali – who became a cause célèbre among those pushing for the World Trade Organisation's Doha talks to ban cotton subsidies to help poorer nations, where production costs are said to be the cheapest in the world. The four countries already rank between 134 and 163 out of 169 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures income, life expectancy and education – and cotton makes up 5-10% of their economies and much of their exports, mostly to China and India's manufacturing industries.

Another advantage claimed for west African cotton is that it is mostly rain-fed, avoiding the problems in other parts of the world where farmers are draining rives and aquifers to water crops.

Removing subsidies should also not add to inflation for clothes and cotton goods, said Harriet Lamb, the Fairtrade Foundation's executive director. "The actual cost of cotton as a proportion of the garment consumers buy isn't huge, so a significant rise in the price of cotton would be a few pence extra on the end product."

The subsidies paid over the past nine years were US$24.5bn in the US, $7bn in the EU, and the remainder in India and China.

In 2005 governments agreed to end the cotton subsidies, but the deal will not come into force until the prolonged talks reach a full agreement. The next ministerial meeting has not been scheduled, but one is expected next year to mark 10 years since the talks began in the Qatar city of Doha.